This is like home to me...
What I am about to say will make absolutely no sense to most of you. I am going to miss my new home. To me a bar is like an old friend, a place to call home, a place you can always find a friend. To the 10% of you that get this " cheers"! I was literally raised in the bar business. The look of the familiar wood bar tops with rounded corners and some very simple or very intricate etchings and moldings are like a favorite childhood toy. The sight of all the different bottles and brews and glass wear are like beautiful jewelry to other girls. The odd smell of wood polish, beer, booze, and smoke are a comforting smell to me. The old man at the end of the bar, the young visitors in the middle and the regulars at one end usually closest to where the bartender spends his or her time. These are all comforting sights and remind me of home. My family was made up of bartenders, servers, managers, bookies, broads, and boozers. It may sound funny but back then kids in bars were pretty common and I made a mint on handstands from the regulars! I never ran short of quarters to play pacman and pinball. I heard stories and language that most parents would be appalled at these days but to me it was normal. It was home to me and that strange and wonderful crowd was my family.
Since that time I have always lived with in walking distance to a favorite pub. When I say pub I mean a bar's bar. Not a nightclub, or an upscale restaurant bar, nothing fancy and a wide range of people. A place where people get to know you and welcome you in. A few years ago I was transplanted to the suburbs for the first time in 20 years. I thought my life was over. There were no decent bars where I felt home in. There were chains and a couple places that just did not strike me. One day just a little over a year ago, a friend asked me to join her at this little unknown bar in the bottom of an old brick schoolhouse. A private place, a dive bar. OH I was so totally in! This even sounded like my kind of place before I walked in. I knew immediately I had found a new home. The crazy part was it had been so long since I had a comfortable place to hang out I felt uncomfortable! It took a while for me to gather up the courage to go in by my self. This was completely unlike me but this was different, this family was a little tighter then most.
The past year has been a good time and I have met amazing and wonderful people. If you recall my first post Insomnia Used To Be Fun I have found my 3 am coffee shop in the burbs. There are so many types with stories to tell I could write another full play based on these characters alone. I really appreciate all of them. There comes a time in life when you know that this home is only borrowed, rented, not a permanent dwelling. I used to joke that if things did not work out between the man I was dating and myself that I would give up my membership and disappear, it was after all his home since its birth and I was merely a visitor. What I did not realize is one day I would eat those words. The time has come, he is gone, and I realized last night that I care too much to be comfortable hanging out while he meets the next one. So off I will go to find a new home. This time of year , if you are a regular in a pub then you understand, is the worst time of year to do this! The Christmas season can be hectic and your bar family understands your sudden desire to run screaming from the mall straight into a stool with a comforting drink, a smoke, and a friendly nod of appreciation from the parent two stools down. New years eve, you need to be around friends with all the drinking and debauchery that goes on! Your friends will have your back when you have one to many. I have no doubts I will find a place to go for New years but there will be a lot less celebrating so I can watch my own back. Yes I will find a new home, I already have one in mind, a little farther drive and a lot more expensive, but comfortable. Change is inevitable but I don't have to like it.
